


The Talk

by dudeno



Category: Roseanne
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-02 03:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10935714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dudeno/pseuds/dudeno
Summary: In the year 2017, Darlene reflects on her life and talks to her dad.





	The Talk

**Author's Note:**

> This complies with the “final" episode of Roseanne but obviously doesn’t with whatever new retconning canon they’re conjuring up for the show’s renewal to revive Dan and otherwise undo the series finale. Inspired by the skit Sara and John did on The Talk about “Darlene” coming out as (gasp) a talk show host.

It’s been over twenty years, and you still talk to your dad.

Not often, but. You do. Usually during Monday Night Football and usually after a few beers. He’s a pretty good listener as far as dead guys go. Always has kind words for you, unkind words for the ref, and decent advice when you need it.

You tell him you’re a talk show host now, and he’s supportive. He doesn’t even make jokes about it, but maybe that’s because he’s probably a figment of your imagination rather than an actual ghost and you need for him not to.

The show is filmed in Chicago and only reaches Northeastern Illinois and part of Indiana, and, like, you're still living small-town Lanford life and making the 40-minute drive to work five days a week, so you’re no Whoopi or Oprah, but it's a choice. You've chosen to settle for a couple reasons. Party because it turns out you'd rather have a relationship with your family than become that estranged family member who doesn't belong—been there and done that multiple times, didn't appreciate the cold shoulder—but mostly because you care about your work. This mediocre talk show doesn't compromise so many of your morals and values that you can't live with yourself unlike the well-paying semi-conservative radio show you worked for in Springfield in between writing jobs.

Mom had that commentator segment on the news for a second in the ‘90s, you remind yourself when you start feeling embarrassed to have a job like this, a job that caters to bourgeois sensibilities from time to time while ignoring rates of poverty and unemployment. Half the people on your block can’t afford to do or buy the things talked about on the show. The episodes that feature the newest saccharine business gimmicks with reasons why you should “go on out and see for yourself” are the hardest to get through.

If reminding yourself that your mom used to talk on TV too doesn’t work, you remind yourself that she took a lot of genuinely self-degrading jobs so you could one day interpret telecommunication as something to be ashamed of. God knows she’s reminded you plenty of times. Plus, they haven’t given you a truly repugnant discussion topic since you blew up on daytime television over a business-owning guest who sided with the bakers in the Indiana gay wedding controversy. You were an internet meme for the next two months.

Pseudo Ghost Dad laughs his belly laugh and wags his finger, “You know, for a minute there, I thought you were gonna tell me you were gay.”

And even though he’s not really here, and he’ll never really know, you wonder if you'll ever be ready to confirm that for him. It’s been years since you made the radio-to-TV host transition, and only now were you feeling comfortable enough to let him know about it.

“Yeah, let’s save something for halftime,” you half-joke, readjusting in your seat uncomfortably and taking a long drink of your beer—like he used to, you realize as you’re setting your can back down on the ring-stained coffee table Mom gave you.

You’ve adopted quite the sense of humility in the past couple decades, so much so that any previous version of you including clinically depressed teenage you might have considered the you from now pitiful, but those versions of you haven't lived long enough to know better. When you’re a blue-collar woman and your husband dies it takes away your whole sense of security. And what's more, what you know now that you didn't know then is that even though you loved Mark—and you really did love him—you didn’t know what you were missing while he was alive. Didn't know what it was to want someone and to want to be intimate for the sake of intimacy. 

But one day Harris asked if “Jenny from work” was your girlfriend while the two of you were eating baked ziti leftovers at the kitchen table, and from there, it all unraveled.

The question was simple enough to answer because Jenny wasn’t your girlfriend but hard to let go of and forget when you couldn’t understand where it came from. You had to wonder why that conclusion had been drawn in the first place.

Jenny de la Renta had been your co-host for about eight months at the time, and yeah, she was attractive in a cutesy, obvious sort of way. All bubbly and sunshiny with a magic rainbow trailing out of her ass—the kind of woman you only learned to not openly mock once you reached a professional level you couldn't risk losing. Only, she was more than her appearance and the way that she presented herself. She was also able to return your quips like no one you’d met before. That was a nice surprise.

Well, try as you might, you couldn’t see what Harris saw when you interacted with Jenny. To understand where Harris got the idea required watching playback of an episode, which you didn’t normally do. Then it made sense to you too.

What it came down to was…you lingered. It wasn’t that you had feelings for this woman or that you were attracted _to_ her, because you (probably) didn’t and you (probably) weren’t, but looks can be deceiving. Because she rebounded so well off the smart aleck things you said, you’d laugh and she’d laugh and your eyes would linger. You wanted to torch the TV set as you were watching it because you looked like a love-struck idiot on-screen and likely had for months. For Jenny freakin’ de la Renta.

The situation didn’t unfold in real life like it did in your head when you pictured yourself addressing it (which is not to say that you were into Jenny or planning to tell her about the nutty stuff your daughter said or anything). Jenny, being the star with untapped potential that she was, was destined for bigger and better things. Like becoming the sole Chicago metro area newscaster in the 3:30 to 4 AM block. A week after your confusing discovery, she let the producers know she would be out of there by the end of the month.

The night of Jenny's last day at work, you sent Harris over to Becky and David's before going to the Lobo and finding a decent enough guy to sleep with and knock that irritating uncertainty out of your head. You were sure that it worked. The guy had no reservations about sleeping with you, and it felt good to know you still had that power.

But then it happened again, for real this time, and you freaked out. There was this camerawoman. Denise. She shared your dislike for your arrogant new co-host and later an interest in sci-fi. You noticed her reading one of your favorite books as you were heading in for hair and makeup one morning, and you mentioned it; after that conversation, talking to her was almost too easy. It’s the closest thing to an authentic female friendship you’d had since Bookstore Karen who was more than twice your age at the time. The point of emphasis here is that friendship with women had never been your strong suit so you didn’t really know what it was supposed to look or feel like. _I don’t mind eating lunch with her_ turned into _I’m weirdly disappointed she’s not here today_ which turned into _I can’t wait to tell her about the upcoming expo in Rosemont_ which lead to the most bizarre urge you can ever recall experiencing: wanting to touch her. Even without a reason to, you still wanted to. She could have a perfectly crisp shirt collar and you’d still get the urge to reach out and fix it. God, was that weird. You weren’t a touchy person, never had been. Couldn’t stand Mark touching you most of the time. And yet...

Denise, you’d noticed, was smart and soft-spoken, diligent in way that appealed to you. Maybe your mom was onto something when she wrote her fictional account of the Conner-Harris-Healy family where David was your soulmate or whatever, because while you yourself could never imagine dating David, not even when you thought you were straight, she nailed your type of person. She somehow knew what it would take to make you happiest if you could someday let yourself (though she’ll never get the satisfaction of knowing that). Unlike fictional David, though, Denise seemed to like the things about you that push most people away. Your smart mouth either brought her amusement or gave her a reason to also have a smart mouth depending on where you aimed it. Not so strangely in hindsight, you found yourself not wanting to aim it at her so much. She even had a quality you'd never seriously sought out in past partners: profundity. From the moment she told you she had dreams of becoming a legendary, innovative poet like Langston Hughes during her college years until she realized there could only be one Langston Hughes, you knew you were pretty much screwed.

The thing you had for Denise got so real you went to Aunt Jackie for dating advice for what may have been the first time in your life. (“If you tell Becky I asked you about this, you’re dead.”) Because, sure, you’d always been the best person to rationalize your own thoughts, but as it turned out, what you _thought_ was attraction to men was like, interest or something. Or it was you recognizing your ability to manipulate them, because that’s the kind of guy you always went for. Or you were finding validation you didn’t know you were looking for when they desired you. Or, if you had to describe what kept you coming back to Mark, a fondness. Attraction is complicated, and once you could finally recognize it, you questioned your entire post-pubescent life. You’d been misinterpreting everything. You didn’t really want _him_ or _him_ , but you might have wanted _her_. (You still refuse to even think about why you hated Molly from next door so much. She really did suck but you really did hate her before she deserved it, and with a gratuitous furiosity that now appears to have been semi-sort of occasionally unwarranted.)

Aunt Jackie laughed at first. She thought your “problem” was hilarious and sweet, and she had only been surprised by how long this took you. Apparently lacking natural femininity doesn’t automatically make you a lesbian but the combination of that plus the way you treated all of your boyfriends like doormats plus how you follow every Chicago-based sports team under the sun except the White Sox plus Becky giving you the nickname “Butch” plus your license to drive a motorcycle which you got when you saw your dad's ’55 Panhead collecting dust in the garage plus all the flannel, vests, blazers, and jeans in your closet didn’t add up to a super hetero list of defining traits. Aunt Jackie, former truck driver and the queen of gay stereotypes, had no trouble naming off yours. It kind of ticked you off; you wished she’d said something to you, but she said it wasn’t her place to make that kind of assumption (“…out loud.”). You asked her what came next with Denise, and she said to let things happen naturally but don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. And they did, and you did.

You and Denise were walking to your cars after work when she finally made her move, sly and endearing in a way that reminded you of your parents and their cheeky banter. She got you to agree to meet her at Cracker Barrel one evening before she finished with, “Great. It’s a date,” and you hadn’t known what else to say but to agree, “I guess it is.”

Once you tested and could confirm that you’d never been attracted to men like you were attracted to women, you had to laugh like Aunt Jackie had laughed because you knew right then that your mom wouldn’t accept it. No way in hell was she going to accept it. Not that she was a bigot knowingly—she tried her hardest not to be—but she would remain unconvinced of this truth until the end of time. Your aunt still hasn’t successfully convinced Mom she’s full-blown homo and she’s known about Aunt Jackie since they were teenagers. Your mom is better with the gay stuff in theory than she is in practice. She’s got the same hang-up with race and atheism. What’s that saying? You can lead a hippie-generation progressive to a new era but you can’t make it adapt its outdated perspective.

When you broke the news to her after a solid two months of dating Denise, Mom was mad she was the last to find out more than anything else. Harris was just glad you'd found someone who made you happy. DJ found out over FaceTime because that’s how you, Becky, and Jerry communicate with him now that he’s out in California, but he said he was happy for you and, okay, he might have thought there was something going on between you and Molly for awhile. That’s right where you end the call because God help you if you ever decide you might’ve been attracted to the hillbilly girl who wore too much perfume, ditched you for boys, and thought she could steal Mark from you. Even Grandma—who, let’s face it, is probably only still hanging on at this point to spite your mom and Aunt Jackie—found out sooner. It was a rare and worthwhile treat to make Mom blow up like you did. Becky had been wholly supportive as well, but only after Mom’s reaction did she high-five you with a “Way to go, Butch!”

"Say, where's the kid?"

You take another drink of your beer and set it down, pulling your eyes away from the TV. "Harris goes to U of I now. She’s majoring in psychology, but if she thinks she’ll ever be able to understand the psyche of this family, she’s in for a rude awakening."

He laughs. "No kiddin'. University of Illinois? I knew she'd be smart. She's got one heck of a mom."

You smile but something about it hurts to hear. "I really miss you, Dad."

Dad offers a bittersweet smile in return. "I miss you too, Kiddo. But I'm here if you need me."

"I know. Thanks."

"D'you say something, babe?"

You turn to find Denise coming in through the door to the garage with a paper bag full of groceries in her arms. Her braids are pulled into a bun, her glasses have slipped to the tip of her nose, and she's making loud, comical air smooches your way as she passes. You can't help but smile at the interruption before turning back to an empty room. It’s just you and the beer you’ve drank and the couch only you are sitting on. 

"Just talking to myself," you say, joining her in the kitchen and greeting her with a kiss.


End file.
